Focus on the Offered Customer Experience There is nothing more effective and cheaper in marketing than word-of-mouth advertising. In the event that the product you offer is good and customer support is great, your clients will talk about the business with others. You want to be sure that the experience is great for the customer from the moment enter your business office or visits your site to the moment in which the product has been used....

Update: The hackers followed through with their threat to release Ashley Madison data. Last month, we got an opportunity to sit down with Danny Boice to chat about his new startup Trustify, which offers on-demand private investigation services. As a response to the recent Ashley Madison hacking, the company launched a tool earlier this week that allows people to discover whether their significant others have are cheating on them. By simply entering the email address of your loved one, you’ll get sent a report detailing whether he or she has been spotted online meeting other people....

In other words, the tech community is getting more VC money than ever, even if it’s still going to an incredibly small amount of billion-dollar companies. Entrepreneurs looking for funding across the nation still need to track down the right VC firm for them. That’s a truism that applies to startup founders in Boston as much as anywhere else, which is why we’ve tracked down all the major venture capital firms operating in and around the Boston area....

The Size According to one source, it’s going to be big. Really big. Like unimaginably, unreasonable, Hindenburg big. If that’s not specific enough for you, rumors have put it in the ballpark of 200 meters. For those of you that refuse to learn the metric system, that’s two football fields. The Price Tag Let’s be honest; if you cofounded a company with an annual income of $28 billion, an air yacht would be the least crazy thing you’d think about building....

Now, an internal letter has accused Facebook of pressuring its moderators’ onsite trauma counselors to divulge confidential information. Facebook has responded to the accusations, as well as the outsourcing company at the centre of the allegations, although their comments have done little to appease those affected. Confidentiality Breached Content moderation for Facebook is a grim job for low pay, sifting through violent, offensive and pornographic material, but contractors do have access to on-site counseling from, as they’re internally known, “wellness coaches....

Yes, particularly in the last few months, fast food chains like KFC and Pizza Hut have released a number of unique packaging promotions that have shown the world how impressively oblivious they are to their customers needs. They have modernized, digitalized, and future-ified everything from pizza boxes to meal deals and it’s proving that their tech departments are all about “coulda” rather than “shoulda.” For those of you that don’t know about these innovation abominations, take a look at two examples of the worst offenders below....

Password security remains the first line of defense for most online activity, with password managers representing one of the most effective ways to secure your accounts. Unfortunately, many businesses don’t bolster their password security enough to fend off attacks, with 81% of security breaches stemming from a compromised password. With this kind of threat looming, getting the best advice on how to better secure your passwords is vital. Fortunately, this new report will help you get the best advice on cybersecurity while avoiding some of the worst....

The jam-packed panel took this question to a whopping six founders, all of whom could share a unique Northwest perspective. They were: Aseem Badshah, founder and CEO of Socedo; Paul Ingalls, founder and CEO of Ripl; Early-stage investor Sanjay Puri, who co-founded 9Mile Labs; Avni Patel Thompson, CEO and founder of caregiver-hiring app Poppy; Ben Waters, CEO and co-founder of WiBotic Inc.; and Geeman Yip, CEO and founder of cloud services startup BitTitan, who we interviewed earlier this week....

Fifty years ago, small businesses were able to access international markets indirectly as part of the supply chains of large multinational companies, but direct engagement was often limited to those firms with the resources and stomach for dealing with hassles like currency conversions and difficult customs issues. The great promise of the Internet is that small businesses, startups, and innovators of all kinds can tap into global markets directly. Technology is beginning to democratize access to the global marketplace, facilitating the formation of global networks and platforms that improve trust, reliability and the delivery of products and services around the world....

Analyze past holiday-season data Before actually crafting any new plans, take a look at your holiday stats from last year. Where did most of the traffic come from? Was it social media or email marketing? Special influencer campaign or paid search? You already have the answer to these questions right in Google Analytics. For instance, if last year’s holiday email campaign brought 35% of conversions last year, it may be a smart move to revive it this year....

Black’s response was to create Glass-Media, a company with the tech to turn any storefront, street-facing glass or indoor surface into a vivid and interactive display capable of running the latest digital ad campaign in real time. In other words, it creates a dynamic new version of a storefront. I learned a lot in my interview with Daniel, including Black’s biggest challenges and advice for any entrepreneurs interested in the hardware/software space....

At first, with little to no traction, there are of course areas of risk intertwined into the core of the business, but ultimately are you able to quickly fail, iterate, and shift your focus without creating large ripple effects. Obviously for larger businesses, even the smallest change can create waves for their users and customers. Therein lies the conundrum. At first, the world is the ocean, your startup will feel every bump and shift in wind, allowing you to more easily adjust accordingly....

With research conducted by J. Thelander Consulting, it’s been found that “the median annual pay for a woman who holds a full-time, year-round job is $39,621 while the median annual pay for a man who holds a full-time, year-round job is $50,383”. With this drastic pay difference, there’s no doubt that wage inequality is an issue. Though it’s often considered fact that women make only 70 cents to every man’s dollar, those facts can be delved deeper....

Today however, fiat money is basically just paper with values determined by supply, demand and balance of payments – these are no longer backed by precious metals. In August 15, 1971, Richard M. Nixon officially cut the ties between the US dollar and gold, thus putting the end to the gold standard established at Bretton Woods postwar. These days the winds of change are up again – the majority of transactions first went cashless....

There’s a company in San Francisco, SparcIt, that claims to be able to measure and improve creativity. And they recently launched their creativity assessment training platform designed specifically for businesses. According to SparcIt, this new tool legitimately enables companies to assess and improve the creativity of their employees. The new creativity assessment trainer platform provides consultants, experts, and workshop facilitators the ability to quickly assess the semantic creativity of individuals, students or employees....

Recently, I sat down with Beth N. Carvin, cofounder and CEO of JamBios and Nobscot, to talk about the difference between entrepreneurship now and in the year 2000. Her first company, Nobscot, was founded in 2000, while JamBios was launched earlier this year, so she has some unique insight into what it took to be successful back then, and how that differs from success in the modern age. As Carvin put it, there are four factors that have relevant differences between entrepreneurship now and in 2000....

The Demise of Offline Shopping With the rise of online shopping and the popularity of ecommerce sites, there has been additional pressure on the transport industry to deliver packages on time. Customers are expecting almost instantaneous delivery of their purchases and the transport companies have to keep up. Success is determined by the companies’ ability to deliver faster and be exceptionally reliable. Technological advancements in this area have drastically improved supply chain efficiency where deliveries can now be tracked in real time....

While an instant messaging system is integral to your company’s success, confidential information may be exchanged during conversations, making it imperative to have a secure system. Here are some tips on how to make sure the instant messaging system your business uses is secure: Utilize Two-Factor Authentication You may have never heard the phrase “single factor authentication,” but chances are pretty good you know exactly what it is. A single factor authentication is a messaging system that only requires a username and password to gain access....

How do you take your great idea from a fantasy to a reality? Figuring out how to pitch your startup is an art and a science. Identify your customer It cannot be said enough; no company is so ubiquitous that its customer base can be defined as “everyone.” One of the most important steps any would-be entrepreneur can take is to define their average customer as specifically as possible. If, for example, a company is selling geeky T-shirts, some elements that they might fit into their customer profile:...

Teamwork brings individuals together in a coordinated effort to work towards a common goal. While most of us are not Olympians, we do work in different types of teams. Here are five actions you can take to become a better team collaborator, inspire your teammates, and help your team become high performing. Hold Yourself Accountable Accountability is fundamental to being a great teammate. Do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it....